Muhammad (saw) – The Perfect Man — Page 927
Muhammad sa The Perfect Man 927 Mu h ammad, however, was born in the year 570, in the city of Makkah, in southern Arabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from the centres of trade, art, and learning. Orphaned at the age of six, he was reared in modest surroundings. Islamic tradition tells us that he wasilliterate…. . . Most Arabs at the time were pagans, who believed inmany gods……The Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia had a reputation of being fierce warriors. But their number was small and plagued by disunity and internecine warfare, they had been no match for thelarger armies of the kingdoms in the settled agricultural areas to the north. However, unified by Muhammad for the first time in history and inspired by their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab armies now embarked upon one of the most astonishing series of conquests in human history…. . Numerically, the Arabs were no match for their opponents……However…. . in a scant century of fighting, these Bedouin tribesmen, inspired by the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empire stretching from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean the largest empire that the world had yet seen……. How,